Gmax, Maggos, MDLVis, Vs Blender

[aple]

The absence of an Import and Export plugin for MDL/MDX for Blender is incredibly difficult to deal with to near impossible. The only worth-while Freeware ways to model for WC3 all have numerous things in common.

Very out-dated. A lot of programs just do not have functionality that make the modelling process easy and fast. This includes Maggos Model Editor, MDLVis, and the NeoDex plugin for Gmax. Milkshape and 3Dsmax are not freeware alternatives and Milkshape is as outdated as Gmax is.

Some of these functionality are:

• 1. Merging two Vertices into 1. Basically taking two vertices, snapping them to one or the other or in between the two, and REMOVING one and adding all the edges and faces from the removed vertex to the other vertex.
  
• 2. Creating an edge between two selected vertices. Creating a face from 3 or more selected vertices, or 3 or more selected edges. Creating shapes/meshes/objects via 4 or more selected vertices, 6 or more selected edges, or 4 or more selected faces (Based off the most simple shape you can make, a Triangular-based Pyramid) all doable with only 1 or 2 clicks or a simple hotkey.
  
• 3. Refined, simple, and User-Friendly UI that has all needed features, from mesh editing to animation and skinning, right there accessible with just a click of a button.
  
• 4. Important features not buried in UI and would take the average person only an afternoon to learn and use effectively.

Other things that these programs have in common is how limited they are. Only Gmax provides the means to create a model from scratch (But I wouldn't touch Gmax with a 10ft pole if I had the choice), while the others only provide very limited editing or finalizing ability.

Some advantages Blender has over other programs is,

• 1. It's free and open-source.
• 2. It uses Python Scripting, which is an easy to use and wildly common and beloved scripting language that is used on numerous platforms, often more respected then XML.
• 3. It has a very fluid and well-thought out UI providing almost everything you need at the face of the program. From skinning, to animating, mesh editing, exact edits by putting in coordinates for vertices, and bones, attachments, and rigging, rendering, etc...
• 4. Extremely easy to navigate 3D environment with a very clear, easy to see, 3D View.

I don't understand why Gmax is considered over something like Blender with all of this in mind.

If you need any more convincing, please ask questions. I'd like this thread to actually accomplish something instead of going into obscurity like most other threads about Blender here...

(I'm not trying to shit on NeoDex or anything, it's a very good tool made by a talented guy, it's just made for a very old program.)

I'm sure I'm not the only person here that'd greatly appreciate an MDX Import/Export plugin for Blender that supports animations. It doesn't really even need to support ribbons or particles, because MLDVis can do that really really well.

 

[oger-lord]

NeoDex plugin for Gmax

You can use it with 3ds max 2014 instead. Even starcraft 2 art tools use 3ds Max 2011.

Maggos Model Editor

Magos Model Editor is great to make some small modifications and thats the purpose of the tool.

By the way no one stops you to create a plugin for blender.

 

[aple]

You can use it with 3ds max 2014 instead. Even starcraft 2 art tools use 3ds Max 2011.


Magos Model Editor is great to make some small modifications and thats the purpose of the tool.

By the way no one stops you to create a plugin for blender.

3Ds Max is not freeware.

If I had the knowledge to script a plugin for it, I'd obviously do it myself. Not trying to sound like an ass, but that's a pretty stupid thing to say honestly. That's like the saying "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and feed him for a lifetime" except you're not giving him a fish or teaching him how to fish but still expecting him to be fed for a life-time.

It would take me years to learn how to do it because I have 0 coding experience entirely. A lot of people on these forums have several years of coding experience and most of those people have gone to school for it at some point in their life. I am clearly at a disadvantage there, I'd have to learn everything from the ground-up and it'd take me far longer to do that, years at the least, then if I just went to school for it. Which is not what I want to go to school for, I'm already going to go to school for 3D Modelling.

 

[BlinkBoy]

gmax can import .3ds. Do your modeling in blender and do animations on gmax.

 

[Ardenian]

I agree with aple. Blender is a great tool to create models and it is a shame that there is no support to convert .blend ( or any other file type that supports animations) into the .mdx or .mdl.

I know there exists this obj/3ds converter on Hive ( tools), but it refuses to convert my obj or 3ds ( maybe they are too big, but I waited over 15 minutes with a converter saying 'No response').

It would be a great step forward if a coding experienced could create such a script.
There exist a script on the Internet ( but it is outdated) that allows to import .mdl, but I think it does not work with newer versions.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

3Ds Max is not freeware.

You can download a free students licence for non-commercial use directly from Autodesk, so it pretty much is freeware. At least for us. You're screwed if you want to make a commercial mod, though.
Then again, you aren't allowed to do that in WC3 anyway.

But of course, I'd love to have a plugin for Blender, just because there's some features in Blender that I like more than the 3ds max equivalents.


But to be honest: it's probably easier to just add the required features to build models from the ground up to MDLvis instead of writing a Blender plugin on the level of Neodex. Because the missing features pretty much only boil down to:

1) Being able to adjust weights for skinned vertices to multiple bones
2) A magos-style node editor including sounds, particles and ribbons
3) More projection types for UVW mapping (especially cylindrical projection)
4) Creating primitives (Sphere, box, rectangle)